OTILIA

Somewhere (in atheist heaven perhaps?), the spirit of Luis Bu?uel smiles on OTILIA, a hot-blooded tango of deathless hatred and fatal passion in early 20th-century Mexico. They say every one of us has a dark side, but Otilia's can quite literally be seen; it's an unsightly smudge of a birthmark that covers much of the left side of her face. That, combined with her swelling bosom, natural sensuality and inherited wealth, makes the girl an object of simultaneous desire, scorn, envy and revulsion among the village men and women. While Otilia has a true friend and defender, of sorts, in the slow-witted handyman Melquiades, her overprotective father, landowner Don Isaac, has another idea. He decides to marry Otilia 'safely' off, in the manner of a business arrangement, to Isidro, the local police chief who covets Don Isaac's considerable property. But on their wedding night Isidro infects his unenthusiastic bride with the venereal disease he contracted while frequenting the town brothel, robbing Otilia even of the possibility of having children. Striking back against a cruel destiny dictated by anatomy, Otilia gives her body freely and wantonly to any man who wants to visit her farm villa except, of course, her husband. And when Rub?n, a notorious wanted outlaw, falls wounded and helpless into Otilia's hands, she sees her opportunity to wreak further vengeance on Isidro. In doing so she allows herself to become vulnerable to yet another betrayal. (In Spanish with English subtitles)